The Peripheral

28

Lev’s father’s house of love, a corner property but otherwise undistinguished, was in Kensington Gore.

The car that had driven them was piloted by a small peripheral, a homunculus seated in a cockpit rather like an elaborate ashtray, embedded in the top of the dash. Netherton assumed it was controlled by some aspect of Lev’s family’s security. It irritated him, as pointless in its way as Ash’s theatricalities. Or, he supposed, it was intended to amuse Lev’s children, in which case he doubted it did.

Neither he nor Lev had spoken, on the way from Notting Hill. It felt good to be out of Lev’s house. He’d wished his shirt could have been pressed, though at least it had been laundered, the best such bot-free premises could offer. An antique unit called a Valetor needed repair, Ossian said.

“You don’t, I suppose,” Netherton asked, looking up at the polarized windows of the house of love, “use this yourself?”

“My brothers do,” said Lev. “I loathe the place. A source of pain for my mother.”

“I’m sorry,” said Netherton, “I’d no idea.” He now remembered that he had, actually, Lev once having told him all too much about it, drinking. He looked back at their car, in time to see their driver, the homunculus, hands on its hips, apparently watching them from atop the dash. Then windows and windshield polarized.

“I don’t think my father was ever that enthusiastic about this sort of thing,” said Lev. “There was something pro forma about it all, as if it were expected of him. I think my mother saw that too, and that made it worse.”

“But they’re together now,” Netherton observed.

Lev shrugged. He wore a battered black horsehide jacket with a Cossack collar. When he shrugged, it moved like a single piece of armor. “What did you think of her?”

“Your mother?” Netherton had only seen her once, in Richmond Hill, at some particularly Russian function.

“Lowbeer.”

Netherton glanced both ways, up and down Kensington Gore. Not a pedestrian or vehicle in sight. London’s vast quiet seemed suddenly to press in. “Should we be talking, here?” he asked.

“Better here than in the house,” said Lev. “More than one person’s been set up for extortion, there. What did you think of her?”

“Intimidating,” said Netherton.

“She offered me help with something,” Lev said. “That’s why we’re here.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“You were?”

“When you came back from escorting her to her car, you seemed taken with her.”

“I sometimes find my family oppressive,” Lev said. “It’s interesting, to meet someone with a countervailing degree of agency.”

“Isn’t she basically doing the City’s will, though? And aren’t your family and the Guilds quite deeply in one another’s pockets?”

“We all do the City’s will, Wilf. Don’t imagine otherwise.”

“What was her suggestion, then?” Netherton asked.

“You’re about to see,” said Lev. He mounted the steps to the entrance of the house of love. “I’m here,” he said to the door, “with my friend Netherton.”

The door made a low whistling sound, seemed to ripple slightly, then swung smoothly and silently inward. Netherton followed Lev up the steps and through it, into a foyer of variegated pinks and corals.

“Labial,” said Lev. “So crushingly obvious.”

“Majora,” agreed Netherton, craning his neck at a fretwork archway carved from some glossy and particularly juicy-looking rose stone. Or deposited, rather, piecemeal, by bots, the whole place having that look of never having been touched by human hands.

“Mr. Lev. So good to see you, Mr. Lev.” Not young, the woman was otherwise of no particular age, possibly Malaysian, her cheekbones etched in graceful arcs of tiny triangular laser scars. “It’s been too long.”

“Hello, Anna,” said Lev. Netherton wondered if she’d been calling him Mr. Lev since his childhood. It seemed possible. “This is Wilf Netherton.”

“Mr. Netherton,” said the woman, ducking her head.

“They’re here?” Lev asked.

“Upstairs, first floor. The escort satisfied herself that we were legitimate prospective buyers, then left. Should you choose to purchase, the nutrient equipment and other service modules will be delivered to Notting Hill. If not, they’ll send someone to collect her.”

“Who will?” Netherton asked.

“A firm in Mayfair,” said Lev, starting up a curving coral stairway. “Estate sales, mainly. Pre-owned.”

“Pre-owned what?” Netherton followed, the woman a few steps behind.

“Peripherals. Quite high end. Some early collectibles. We haven’t time to have something printed up.”

“Is this about Lowbeer helping you?”

“It’s about my helping her. Reciprocally,” said Lev.

“I was afraid of that.”

“The blue salon,” said the woman, behind them. “Would you care for drinks?”

“Gin tonic,” said Netherton, so quickly that he was afraid she mightn’t have been able to understand him.

“No, thanks,” said Lev.

Netherton turned on the stairs, catching the woman’s eye and nodding, as he held up two fingers.

“This way,” Lev said, taking his arm, as the stairs ended. He led Netherton into a depthless, deeply blue room, its walls seemingly at some great but indeterminate distance. A fantastically cheesy twilight, a gloaming of second-rate nightclubs, seaside casinos, illusorily extended in a room that could scarcely have been the size of Lev’s drawing room.

“This is truly foul,” said Netherton, impressed.

“Least repulsive room,” said Lev. “The bedrooms are hideous beyond belief. I gave Lowbeer your conversation with the polt’s sister.”

“You did?”

“It was quickest. She needed to make a match, source something locally. How did she do?”

“Do?”

“Stand,” ordered Lev, and a young woman Netherton hadn’t noticed rose from one of the bulbous blue armchairs. She wore a pale blouse and a dark skirt, both quite neutral as to period. Her hair and eyes were brown. She looked at Lev, then at Netherton, then back to Lev, her expression one of mild interest. “She said that she found two others who were nearer matches by facial recognition, but that this one felt better, to her.”

Netherton stared at the girl. “A peripheral?”

“Ten years old. One owner. Bespoke. Estate sale. From Paris.”

“Who’s operating it?”

“No one. Basic AI. Does she look like the polt’s sister?”

“Not remarkably. Why would it matter?”

“Lowbeer says it will, the first time she looks in a mirror.” Lev stepped closer to the peripheral, which looked up at him. “We want to minimize the shock, speed her acclimatization.”

The woman with the laser-etched cheeks appeared with a tray: two highball glasses, bubbles rising in iced tonic. Lev was still looking at the peripheral. Netherton picked up one of the glasses, drank off the contents, returned it quickly to the tray, picked up the other, and turned his back on her.

“We’ll need to buy specialized printers in the stub,” Lev said. “This will be beyond what they usually work with.”

“Printers?”

“We’re sending files for printing an autonomic cutout,” said Lev.

“Flynne? When?”

“As soon as possible. This one will do?”

“I suppose,” said Netherton.

“She’s coming with us, then. They’ll deliver the support equipment.”

“Equipment?”

“She doesn’t have a digestive tract. Neither eats nor excretes. Has to be infused with nutrient every twelve hours. And Dominika wouldn’t like her at all, so she’ll be staying with you, in grandfather’s yacht.”

“Infused?”

“Ash can deal with that. She likes outmoded technology.”

Netherton took a drink of gin, regretting the addition of tonic and ice.

The peripheral was looking at him.